All The Things We Can't Repay
by MarauderishMischiefMaker
Summary: When Novak left SVU in disgrace, she thought she had hit rock bottom. But Casey fleeing to Jacksonville might not be the smartest move when it comes to the safety of a loved one
1. Fallen From Grace

-You lied to Petrovsky and now you're lying to me. The lab reports were dated and stamped! We are all civil servants, Casey! No one is falling on their sword for you! What I want to know is why.

-Because the bad guys can't always win. He deserved to pay.

-And so do you.

Judge Elizabeth Donnelly and ADA Casey Novak "Cold"

**It Was Supposed To Be Me **

**An SVU Fanfiction Story**

**Author's Note: As we never got to hear much about Casey or what happened to her after the finale of the ninth season so I decided to write this and if you miss Novak as much as I do press the little thought bubble button. Any future pairing is undecided I was originally planning to keep it straight but now I don't know. Make a strong case either way and you might be able to sway me. **

**To all who reviewed on Family Portrait thanks so much and keep em coming. To all of you who alerted favorited or plan to do so in the future please take time to review on both stories. It'll only take a second. And now the good stuff,**

**Chapter One Fallen From Grace**

"Ladies and gentlemen this is your pilot speaking. Please put your trays in their upright and locked positions as we will be touching down in our destination, Jacksonville Florida in approximately five minutes time. On behalf of my co-pilot and all the crew we'd like to thank you for flying GIA Airways flight 317 and hope you enjoy your trip."

Casey Novak groaned as she buried her head into the mesh material of her carry on bag.

_Just snap out of it Case," _Novak snapped at herself._ "This is really surreal dream but nothing more than that and it's not like you haven't had weirder… Any minute now the alarm will go off and you'll get ready for work…_

The alarm didn't go off, the alarm didn't go off because as much as Casey hated to admit it this was real life. It wasn't the first shitty situation she'd gotten herself into (far from it) but it was one of the first shitty situations she couldn't get herself _out o_f.

"Guess that's where the term 'rude awakening' comes from", the strawberry blonde muttered force herself to walk on leaden feet as passengers disembarked around her. Of course Liz was right. It was her fault. All of it. It was her fault that McCoy now had to find an interim ADA for Special Victims until there was someone to permanently fill the position. It was her fault that El, Liv, Munch, and Finn refused to speak to her (although last time she checked Finn was also refusing to speak to Elliot). But the thing she felt most guilty for was that she was the reason her boyfriend of three months was sitting in prison for the rest of his life.

She hadn't wanted to tell people yet. Chester had wanted to tell Finn but Casey had made him promise to wait until after the case. She wanted another conviction under her belt and they both would do whatever they had to do for her to get it. That had worked out brilliantly.

"Get moving lady," hollered a man behind her. "What are ya waiting for, the grass to grow?"

Casey gave him the finger. Not the classiest thing to do but she was not in the mood to deal with idiots at the moment. "What kind of place hits seventy-five degrees in the middle of February," she grumbled tying her sweatshirt around her waist.

"Not from around here are you?" a woman laughed. Casey turned around to see who had spoken and a lady pushing a baby stroller sidled up to her, keeping pace.

Casey laughed too. "Actually I'm from New York. The sun is hotter here too but then again we have huge skyscrapers to block in out.

"No wonder you not used to Florida weather. Well it's a nice place to vacation. Or do you have family here?"

"Sort of," Casey shrugged grabbing her bags of the carousel. "Can you uh… tell me where one could get a taxi around here?" The woman pointed and Casey nodded her thanks. "I should have downsized," Casey thought as a particularly heavy bag of shoes almost tipped her over. She never realized how many clothes she had in her closet until she tried to heft her bags into the back seat of a taxi but then again no weeklong vacation she had ever taken required a whole apartment worth of clothes.

"Let me help you." The thin cabbie circled the car and came to her aid, lifting the bags with considerable ease for someone of his stature.

"Where exactly are you taking all this stuff," he laughed holding the door open for her slide in.

"Here." Casey scribbled in address on a piece of scrap paper and handed it to him. "Can you take me?"

"Sure thing."

For the next fifteen minutes the taxi raced down the interstate, scenery swirling past the taxicab window on both sides. Casey might have actually found time to enjoy the view had she not spent the entire ride trying not to upchuck her nerves all over the cab's back seat. The bumpy unpaved parts in the road did the ex-ADA's already churning stomach any favors.

"Here we are," announced the cab driver cheerily and sure enough they in front of a two-story brownstone, its olive green shutters open to the breeze. Casey sat silently making no move to exit the cab.

"Are you sure this is the right address?" she inquired.

The cabbie looked confused. "It's the address you gave me ma'am. Do you have something you could check it against? An old envelope maybe?"

Now that she was here there was no more putting this off. She contemplated asking the driver to circle around the block once or twice but didn't want to come off as crazy.

"'No I'm—I'm sure this is the right house," Casey replied. "Thanks—thank you for the ride." She opened the door and moved all of her luggage onto to the curb. The cabbie rolled down his window expectantly.

"Uh…ma'am that'll be six-fifty," he pointed out

Casey blushed. "Right," she whispered pulling the bills out of her wallet. "Sorry, well have a nice day."

"You too."

As Casey watched him leave she wanted nothing more than to curl up in the back seat and beg the nice man to drive her back to New York, but the fare would be astronomical.

When she had run out of stalling techniques she found she had no other choice but to ring the doorbell. The chime rang out and it seemed like forever before Casey heard footsteps.

"Well, well, well! If it isn't the golden child herself," someone smirked at her from behind the screen door.

"Can I come in?"


	2. The Royal We

**Thank you all so much for all the encouragement, I wasn't planning to update this soon but the idea is in my head…so enjoy. **

_The chime rang out and it seemed like forever before Casey heard footsteps._

_"Well, well, well! If it isn't the golden child herself," someone smirked at her from behind the screen door._

_"Can I come in?"_

Chapter 2: The Royal We

"You not gonna make me stand out here all day are you," Casey chuckled trying to mood.

"I was considering it," they replied with a bitterness that made Casey hang her head feeling as if all the wind had been knocked out of her. "What brings you here so suddenly after twelve of no contact Cassandra?"

_Cassandra, ouch! Well she probably deserved that if… had it really been twelve years?_ As she stood there on the front steps of the brownstone Casey was having the familiar sensation that she was looking into a mirror. Her green eyes gazed into the matching ones and she began to plead. "Please Claire. I kind of need a place to crash."

"All right." Claire stepped aside and Casey crossed the threshold dropping her bags in the foyer.

"You have no idea how much I appreciate this sis!"

Claire said nothing as she went into the kitchen to make another pot of coffee. Casey moved a stack of magazines off the small couch and sat down. She couldn't help but notice the less than warm reception she was getting and had just made a point to get to the bottom of it when Claire came back in carrying a tray with the coffee pot and two mugs.

"I'd forgotten what you took," Claire explained setting the tray down

"This is fine," Casey replied stirring in a couple of sugar packets. For minutes the clinking of silverware was the only noise in the room. When she gazed back up Casey saw that her twin was wearing a puckered expression, the very face she used to make when she was holding something back. There seemed to be a heavy, unspoken tension building between them until it almost hurt for Casey to sit one there for another second. "I knew coming here, barging in on you like this was a bad idea. I mean after all, the cohabitation thing didn't work when we were little either. Do you have a phonebook, I'll just look up the nearest hotel and…"

She was in the foyer with one with her hand in one coat sleeve when Claire caught up with her. "Case, wait! I don't know what happened but whatever it is you can stay here."

Casey froze. "And you sure about that?"

Claire hesitated. "Yeah, if you want to…I mean we aren't kids anymore, so I think we've established that cannibalism is generally frowned about by society…Mind you, I've only got the pullout couch."

"I'll sleep in a closet in that's all you have," Casey blurted enveloping the younger twin in a hug than realizing what she had said, added. "Although if I were you and I lived in a big house like this I would stop being so damn modest Claire de Lune."

"You should talk Miss ADA with her big-shot law degree. If there is any word that would describe turning the ground floor of an office building into an artist's loft that word would be modest."

"How long her you had this place anyway?" Casey asked taking her coat off and returning to the den area.

"Ever since we were nineteen and Mom and Dad turned me out for saying I wanted to quit pre-law and be an artist."

"Dad turned you out!" Casey cried. "But I thought—he told me that you had stormed out after having that huge blowout with him and Mom!"

Claire snorted as she slid out of her shoes and put her feet up. "Well he can afford to say that couldn't he? I mean he still had three good apples left, two sons in the military academy and a daughter he could mold and shape to be next in the Novak lines of lawyers, doctors blah…blah…blah…. See I even talk like an artist. I could've never made in the world of suits and sophisticates. I mean if that's where you found your niche, I'm happy for you but…"

"That's kind of why I'm here," Casey interrupted softly. "I'm not the Perfect One so much anymore. Mom and Dad are probably rolling over in their graves as we speak and if they were alive now I'm sure they would be giving me a mouthful." She smirked. "Though I think my boss did them proud."

Claire let out the breath she had been holding. "You know Case, for some reason I've been thinking a lot about you lately. Guess there really is something to that old twin telepathy theory." She eyed Casey's luggage. "I wish you would have called first so I could clear some closet space for all the shit you brought with you."

"I'm glad you saw it coming, because I sure as hell didn't. Where are you going?"

"To call in for takeout. We're hungry and this may take a while."

"Okay," Casey shrugged. They went into the kitchen where Claire busied herself getting the phonebook and various takeout menus she had collected deliberately avoiding her sister's eye. In a few minutes Casey spoke up. "Wait, what do you mean 'we're hungry'? Are you talking in Queen's English now?"

Claire blushed but quickly laughed it off. "No. I meant 'we' as in the two of us because I assume your staving after your long trip and I really don't feel like cooking."

"The fire department appreciates that I'm sure," quipped Casey dodging a flying menu which she picked up and contemplated. "Pizza!" she decided, "With sausage and peppers."

Twenty minutes later Claire put down her third slice of pizza and muted one of the sappy Lifetime movies they loved to make fun of. "Spill!" she demanded.

Casey sighed. She had hoped against hope that her entire stay would go by without having to address this issue at length but now she had to talk about it and she he hadn't even been at her sister's twenty-four hours.

"One of our detectives was working a ten year cold case dealing crooked cops who raped two illegal immigrants and murdered one of them. Chester, he uh found out that one of the accused men still has his badge.

"So you—you don't know how long you're staying?" Claire inquired trying to keep the quaver out of her voice.

Casey shrugged. "Truthfully no. Until I get something else. I promise it won't be more than a few months."


End file.
